I don’t think most pundits or fans have fully grokked how good the Big 12 might be in 2017. This has almost always been a QB-driven league, at least since Mike Leach transformed it by bringing the Air Raid and Texas HS football became a frontier for spread tactics. There have been some seasons where the Big … [Read more…]
Over at Football Study Hall I have a breakdown of star Temple DE/OLB Haason Reddick and many of the ways that Matt Rhule used him last year. His film is exceptional and instructive on some of Rhule’s favorite tricks for dealing with college offenses. It’s amazing to see all of the guys that Rhule and … [Read more…]
That’s where you add pass-options, particularly vertical pass options, to your two-back runs. With the additions of OC Chip Lindsey and former Baylor QB Jarrett Stidham, War Eagle now has the main components needed to do this successfully. Gus Malzahn was an early innovator of the smashmouth spread and you can read my man Alex … [Read more…]
It’s time for the new home of Sports Treatise to host it’s first Big 12-focused Twitter-bag. If it wasn’t obvious, that’d be where I take questions from all my fellow Twitter-bags and try to answer them in this space. Let’s begin… @Ian_A_Boyd do you think a 34 can work in the big 12? — Matt … [Read more…]
Now that we’ve gone through every Big 12 recruiting class, I guess it makes sense to grade them all in comparison. This is a little tricky since each team has different goals for their program and different approaches to getting it done, but I’m basically going to rank each class on how likely it is … [Read more…]
Matt Rhule walked into a tough situation, a true fixer-upper if you’ll forgive me, in taking over Briles’ Baylor program. Beyond the acrimony over the scandal that took down Briles and much of the leadership at Baylor, Rhule also came to find a gutted roster and a recruiting class with only a single committed player. … [Read more…]
Those games featured future Big 12 QBs Shawn Robinson (TCU), Charlie Brewer (Baylor), and Xavier Martin (Texas Tech). It also provided a nice contrast between two diverging paths I see for spread-option football. I’ll be posting more on these QBs as I wrap up my breakdowns of the Big 12 recruiting classes but read my … [Read more…]
A few weeks back I explained in my column at Football Study Hall “why your team’s new head coach is from the AAC.” Matt Rhule, Tom Herman, and Willie Taggart all used successful stints in the league as launching pads to the Baylor, Texas, and Oregon jobs respectively. AAC football is a wonderful thing and the … [Read more…]
I’m slowly starting to begin my breakdowns of every 2017 Big 12 recruiting class. Normally I haven’t even begun it yet so we’re ahead of schedule so far. There’s often a lot of late movement and additions but JUCO signing day is over and early enrollees are increasingly prevalent so many teams have already made … [Read more…]
Our examination of the Big 12 2017 units continues with the 6-10th place finishers from 2016. The second biggest question with this back half is whether one of these teams can climb up and out of the bottom half and the biggest question is whether that will be Tom Herman’s Texas squad. Here we go… … [Read more…]